1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to data processing and communication systems and, more particularly, to inputting data in a data processing or communication system.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recent developments, many founded on the data-description extensible Markup Language (XML), have given rise to new Web-based applications including multimodal interfaces or browsers. A multimodal browser allows a user to access multimodal content, content that can be both graphical and audible. Traditionally, the user accessed Web content utilizing graphic input from a keyboard or manually directed screen-pointer entry. Later, the user was able to utilize speech input. More recently, the user has been able to access Web content through multimodal interfaces, which permit the use of both graphic and speech inputs.
One type of multimodal browser is provided by the extensible Hypertext Markup Language (XHTML)+Voice, also denoted more succinctly as the X+V markup language. The X+V markup language extends the traditional graphic browser to include spoken interactions. The X+V markup language integrates XHTML, XML Events, and VoiceXML, developed as part of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Speech Interface Framework. The integration includes voice modules that support speech synthesis, speech dialogs, command and control applications, and speech grammars. Voice handlers can be attached to XHTML elements and respond to specific Document Object Model (DOM) events of a visual browser.
By enabling a voice-based interface along with more conventional interfaces to the Web, the X+V markup language has helped expand the reach of the Internet to more devices than just personal computers. On expansion has been in the area of industrial handheld devices which, using the X+V markup language, combine speech recognition and Web browsing to provide input and output (I/O) devices that can be operated without manual keyed-in data entry. These so-called hands-free devices include non-traditional I/O capabilities such as those provided, for example, by barcode scanners.
The extension of a multimodal interface to industrial handheld devices, however, has been hampered by the lack an effective and efficient way of entering data or editing entered data with such devices. This is due to the fact that, with most such devices, it is difficult to determine when data has been entered unless and until a user manually taps out of a data input field.